


In the Stardust of a Song

by gwyneth rhys (gwyneth)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: During Captain America: The Winter Soldier, M/M, Missing Scene, Multi, Music, Precious Amnesiac Assassin Baby, Triggered Memories, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-19
Updated: 2015-06-19
Packaged: 2018-04-05 04:27:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4165845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwyneth/pseuds/gwyneth%20rhys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The shudder courses through you again, there’s a vicious throb like that first touch of the ice on your skin. You don’t know this song. You don’t know any music at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Stardust of a Song

**Author's Note:**

> The Winter Soldier in this is a bit of an amalgam of 616 comics Bucky and MCU Bucky, since we don't really know how autonomous he is within the movie but he does seem to operate independently sometimes. 
> 
> The violence warning is for some memories of a past assassination that are triggered in Bucky's mind where there's also a hint of potential child harm, but nothing happens on-screen. There are also vague hints of canon typical past torture.

Music seeps in through the edges of your comms: a trumpet plays, an orchestra swells behind it. Notes you can’t remember hearing in your lifetime, yet they carry a whiff of familiarity. What should be pleasant instead makes you shudder, crawling under your skin like an insect.

You touch your earpiece. “At location. Target acquired. Confirming visual.” It would be better to shoot through the window, but he’s an aware target and he won’t give you that luxury. He shouldn’t have escaped earlier today. He has a habit of getting out of such situations. You can respect a subject like that, even if the threat of punishment for letting him get away is...unappealing

It’s also unappealing to have a Strike agent calling the shots, funneling information to you, but that’s the price of mission failure: you were a failsafe who failed as a safety. No one to blame but yourself. Sights on the target are all you need for the job at hand, but now here you are, listening to them, listening to music that’s making you twitch. It would be better to communicate with Pierce directly, but that’s not an option at this point in the project, so close to the end. Especially not when you screwed it up.

The target’s readings are obscured, probably by furniture. You shift position to find a better vantage point; it will have to be through the brick wall. This is the least optimal; even with an anti-materiel rifle and special rounds, once they pierce the wall, they may not reliably end up anywhere in the target’s body. But this is your job. This is what you were made for.

The same song plays once more from the beginning.

The shudder courses through you again, there’s a vicious throb like that first touch of the ice on your skin. You don’t know this song. You don’t know any music at all. But it echoes through your head and chest, a voice cascading down frozen canyon walls. Beads of sweat have formed on your forehead and you take your finger off the trigger to reach up and wipe them away. There’s no autonomic nervous system reaction that would indicate the need for sweat--the air temperature’s within comfort range, there’s been no physical exertion.

The sound of a window sliding open whispers under the music, nearly silent but you can hear it. Control says, “Execute the order when in position.” The tempo of the music changes slightly.

“Wait.” Thermal imaging in your scope shows someone else has entered the room from the rear, and you can hear his voice on comms. You check the window. Male, approximately six-two, well-built. He holds something that obscures his entire image, but he stands in full view of the window; he must not know the place is monitored. You hesitate, the itch under your skin distracting. “Is this a secondary target?” Why weren’t you informed when you hunted the mission here? They knew this location was a residence, that there could be collateral, or worse, interference. That he’d have backup.

“Negative. Primary objective only. Do not engage the second subject. Do you copy?” Mission objective is Fury, Colonel Nicholas J. Same as earlier today. You really can’t afford to fail this time. You’ve never faced the consequences for a complete breach of mission requirements before. It’s risking your survival.

The subjects are having a coded conversation. The second subject says, “I didn’t know you were married.” His voice is strong, clear, rich. It sends another shiver up your spine.

Fury says, “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

“I know, Nick, that’s the problem.” The subject knows Fury well enough that he should be eliminated too. Why would they tell you to leave a witness alive? It’s contrary to every directive. There’s an angle here that you don’t have time to figure out. Too many violations of protocol today, like allowing you to operate in full view of the public. The carriers are launching in a matter of days, they can’t afford to have mission parameters violated, it’s your job to protect the project.

“He’s dangerous,” you tell them. Everything about his bearing, the way he holds himself, speaks of it. The music builds behind his words, behind your eyes, throbbing.

“Are you disobeying an order?” You know that tone. Those are memories they’ve never erased. _Zola’s face above you on the table, in front of you on the wall. The tools he holds in his hands. “You will do what we require of you. That’s what we made you for. You will always do what we require.”_ Pierce has different methods, though he will punish you just as severely as they did. But in what way, what way?

“I think--” No. They don’t like it when you talk like that. “He could be dangerous to the future of the project, he knows something, he’s a threat.” You hesitate again before taking the risk, because for some reason you feel...strongly about this. You _feel strongly_. “He’s trouble. I can smell it. Take them both out.”

There’s a long pause. “We know who he is. You have your orders.” The threat hangs there unspoken-- _or else._

“Who else knows about your wife?” the subject says. The singer’s voice rises behind the music.

_Never thought that you would be  
Standing here so close to me_

The target says, “Just...my friends.” He stands and presents your shot. The shift in his position has altered your calculations. You breathe, adjust your numbers, and struggle to retrieve the focus that the music’s distracted you from.

“Is that what we are?” _We are, we are._ The man’s voice, the notes of the music. Neurons fire, electrical impulses transmitting signals up and down your spine, a tattoo of sounds on your prickling skin. Like the chair, only...only you want to know what this is, rather than avoid it.

_There’s so much I feel that I could say  
But words can wait until some other day_

There are too many sounds now, too many words inside your head and they bleed into one another and then out your ears.

Inhale, exhale. Your finger glides along the trigger like it’s a lover’s skin. “That’s up to you--” On the exhale the bullets sing, a song that only you could write.

“Target down.”

You check the window, the second subject is moving him to another room. There’s no visual confirmation on that side. Over the comms, you hear pounding on a door, then a voice, and check the scope. Female, she appears armed, and she calls the subject “Captain Rogers.” Military, then, not a civilian. Even the backup has backup here. What the hell is this? The music seems to grow louder and louder, drowning out their voices. Your heart rate has increased by a small percentage, enough that you breathe faster.

 _Kiss me once, then kiss me twice_  
_Then kiss me once again_  
_It’s been a long, long time_  
_Haven’t felt like this my dear_  
_Since I can’t remember when_

“Foxtrot is down, he’s unresponsive,” the woman says. SHIELD special services was how she identified herself. Two possible combatants and no orders to take either of them out. This feels all wrong. Everything about this is wrong.

Your real hand is shaking slightly and you hold it in front of your face like an alien object you found here on the rooftop. “Mission completed. Heading to exfil now.” And yet you don’t move, instead you stay and watch. What the hell are you doing?

“What’s your visual?” They hear the commotion, too, and assume there’s still the potential for mission failure. It’s been a long time since they doubted you, tested you. Face it: you put yourself in this position.

_It’s been a long, long time_

Something cold and eely slithers in your belly.

“Tell ’em I’m in pursuit,” the subject--the captain--says. There was a voice like that once...it slices through cold blue water like the arm of a swimmer, pulls you up into the light. “I thought you were dead.” Someone smiles at you, brilliant, blinding.

“Do you copy?”

“My exfil is compromised, the subject is pursuing.” The Barrett rifle--your prize--is expendable, the team will have to retrieve it later when they sanitize the AO and deal with the mission fallout. You know better than to grow attached to things. The world changes each time you’re put on ice, revolves thousands of times as you sleep. Things don’t endure.

You run. The subject crashes through the window and into the building opposite. He’s faster, stronger, and more powerful than you’d imagined. A brief flash of anger rockets through you, incandescent behind your eyes: you fucking told them so.

_Since I can’t remember when_

When you’ve almost reached the rooftop’s edge, you hear the glass break, then he drops and rolls, followed by the metallic zing of an object slicing through the air. The thing obscuring his image was a shield; it flies fast and hard but you catch it easily enough in your metal hand. It feels familiar. Almost comfortable, perfectly weighted and smooth. This is your first good look at him--he has a sharp, angular face and dark blond hair.

There was a boy... _His dark blond hair shone under low autumn sun as he climbed a tree. You’re picking apples in someone’s orchard. He’s small and frail but strong, with wiry arms and legs but soft edges. You’re terrified he’ll fall, but he picks some apples and tosses them to you, where you collect them in a sack. “Get down from there,” you snap, your heart pounding with fear for his safety. “The best ones are hardest to reach,” he says, cheeky and as if you’re too dull for words. He shimmies down the tree and hangs off a limb, letting you catch him as he drops, an apple in his mouth like a suckling pig. He bites the apple and holds it to your mouth. Then he curls a fist into the front of your shirt to pull you down atop him on the cool ground, where he kisses you, sweet and crisp as the apple and warm as fall sunshine._

_“Not here. Someone could see us,” you say as you kiss him again._

_“I know.” The thrill of it glitters in his eyes, the way sun hits the water and sparkles._

_“We’re living a little dangerously here. Foolishly.”_

_“That’s ’cause we’re fools in love,” the boy says, laughing, as you bury your fingers in his soft blond hair._

_“We are,” you say, and kiss his mouth, “we are.”_

This man’s hair, his face, they’re not really the same. Not really. You fling the shield--perfectly weighted, strong like him--as hard as you can, the force shoving him back as you leap from the roof. The grappling hook engages, you drop to the ground, and run for your life.

 

If they’d listened, you wouldn’t have had to waste time evading the secondary subject; he’d be dead and you’d be back at station. Now the site is crawling with activity and you have to circle back around to the vehicle. Sirens wail, dogs bark, radios crackle from the EMTs and dozens of police cars already blocking the streets. The music is a sliver jammed in your brain.

The SUV’s parked near a hotel, and when you reach it you throw your gear into the back and make yourself as inconspicuous as possible. Your real hand trembles as you put the key in but don’t press start. Instead you sit there, the quake rippling up your arm, into your head. It’s too much, too much, the noise and the music and the barking barking barking.

“Winter Soldier. Do you need extraction?” Control breaks through on comms; you’d almost forgotten they were there.

“Negative. Location’s hot, I’ll return to base when I’m clear.” You just need some time to figure this out, not have them ask you annoying questions. None of it makes any sense. “Keep a team standing by, I’ll advise if I need them. Going dark for now.”

You’ve gone to ground when it was necessary, so that should satisfy them, at least for a little while. At least till you can figure this out. Maybe this has something to do with being in the United States, so close to Pierce’s AO. It’s different in Europe or Asia, you fade into the woodwork there, they pay less attention in general, leave you alone. You head to an industrial area where you can park. The song pulses inside your skull.

_Kiss me once, then kiss me twice, then kiss me once again_

These are facts you know: the earth rotates at one thousand miles per hour and travels around the sun at sixty-six thousand miles per hour. The galaxy is whirling through the universe at 1.3 million miles per hour.

Humans are made of the residue of exploded suns, collapsed stars. They have memories and create music and kiss. You aren’t human--you are made of metal and gears and the remnants of organic material, hollow, programmed, made to destroy. You are purpose-built, a weapon, the glorious fist of Hydra.

Some of these facts are in dispute now.

The dashboard GPS glows. Each time you’re awakened, there’s a familiarization process for new technology conducted by the scientists or the handlers. They put you in front of pictures and profiles and maps and materiel. They need you to be competent for all contingencies and function independently. But you travel to the mission location with your handlers, choose your spotter or your tac team on the way; this is the first time since you left Russian control, since Pierce became your commander, they’ve brought you in stasis to another continent, situated in a base of operations. Brought the chair, too, for the end of the mission, signifying that you’re to remain here. The chair removes intrusive thoughts to maximize performance. The pain means you have a clear mind. Recollections of past missions--of any kind of past--should not bleed though, it’s only the present that matters.

You touch the dashboard panel and press the buttons--there’s the rear camera, a video player, and satellite radio. _Radio_. The word makes your head snap back.

_The blond boy looms above you, hair falling across his eyes. There is music in the background and you’re on the floor of what looks like a home; it’s old and shabby but cozy. “Say uncle,” the boy says, grinning, and pins your arms above your head. He’s so skinny and pale, yet he’s surprisingly tough._

_Beside a garden wall_  
_Where stars are bright_  
_You are in my arms_

_He sings along with the song as he stares down at you._

_“Not a chance,” you say. “I’m just letting you win.”_

_“_ Uncle _,” he says again, but leans down to kiss you. You chase his mouth with yours as he sits up, pushing your knees apart with his legs, sliding your undershorts off, then his. He reaches over to turn up the radio. The both of you are naked and breathless and the air is close and humid. He enters your body with his, slowly, gently. It’s painful and numbing, and then eases into something wonderful, stars shooting across the black sky behind your eyelids. They’re not as dazzling as his smile. The radio plays, but you two have your own rhythm, your own tune. You are made of stardust._

The screen brings up a list of programs when you scroll with the search button, and you stop at _1940s_. Something about that sounds familiar. These are facts you remember: World War Two was fought in Europe from 1939 until 1945. After Germany violated a nonaggression pact with Russia in 1941, they fought on opposing sides for the remainder of the war, but Hydra was originally a science unit of the German military. It’s not meant for you to understand how or why the allegiances shifted. You were created sometime after the end of the war to help Hydra achieve its mission. You were Russian and then you weren’t.

Holding your breath, you press the channel button. A man with a warm voice sings.

 _I’ll find you in the morning sun_  
_And when the night is new_  
_I’ll be looking at the moon_  
_But I’ll be seeing you_

Your heart rate elevates quickly, so you breathe as if you’re preparing to take a shot in order to slow it down. They’ll read out the vital statistics data later when they access the weapon arm and will require explanations for any spikes or deviations. It’s one of the ways they ensure you don’t go off-course. The fingers on your metal hand curl and uncurl, as if they’re trying to grasp a memory out of the air. The song plays on.

For a few hours, you listen. Song after song after song. Rather than drain the SUV’s battery, you drive around dark streets for a while, then park again, just before dawn. You know you should return to station, but it’s so compelling. Your throat is tight and your jaw aches from clenching it. The skin of your real hand has little crescent moons of blood carved into the palm.

There’s a coffee shop opening up down the street, so you wipe off the rest of the eye-black and throw on the jacket and the cap, put a full glove over your metal hand, before going inside. It’s nearly empty at this hour, and the young woman behind the counter is still setting things up. Nothing seems familiar here; this is the type of place that you’ve experienced only when you’re on your own--and it’s been a very long time since you have been. But you order coffee anyway and pay with the limited cash they provide in whatever local currency is required. There’s music playing above your head. Once again you know that you’ve never heard this before, have no knowledge of this type of music, but it elevates your heart rate and quickens your breath.

“What is that music?” Politeness, conversation--you’ve been trained in all this, though it’s sat unused for quite a while, a weapon left in the field.

“Nat ‘King’ Cole?” the young woman says, her voice rising as if she’s asking you a question in return.

“Oh. I’ve...been away,” you respond, though you’re not really sure why you’re trying to explain anything to her. This is what humans do, though. You try to smile.

“You couldn’t have been away that long, you’re not old enough!” she says with a laugh. “That’s from the classics playlist. Like, fifties, I think.”

There was a little girl. _She has tawny skin, long black hair, and scared dark eyes. You stand in one of the bedrooms of her house, in the shadows. It’s hot and humid and sticky, the end of monsoon season. The targets lie on their bed, blood from their cut throats soaking the pillows beneath them. The girl enters the room, nightgown fluttering around her knees, and cries,_ “Maman, où ètes-vous? Maman, qu’est-ce qu’il y a?” _The fresh sweet scent of bamboo curls through the air, a song plays on the radio that sits on a table beside the bed._

_Love is now the stardust of yesterday_  
_The music of the years gone by_

_The little girl spies you and stops. She’s collateral. You don’t want to kill her--why not, why not?--but those are the orders in the event of discovery. The knife is still in your hand. Or you could pick her up, hold her, let the last thing she hears be the song, the way you held someone small like her before... But you don’t want to kill her._

“Are you okay?” the young woman who makes the coffee asks and waves her hand with your change.

The earth revolves, the constellations blaze with cold fire and cosmic dust. You are not okay.

 

By the time you return to the bank, the Strike team’s gone, just one left behind to mind you; the two technicians are there, fussing with equipment as usual. The technician you’re unfamiliar with wants to hook your arm up to the computer to retrieve your vital statistics, SOP when a mission’s over. You wave him away. The other one, the one you’ve seen before and who’s often more agreeable, even conversational at times, is jittery, glancing anxiously your way. It’s hardly surprising--out all night with no backup, no reports, and they have to answer to someone. They’ve never been on extended ops, and there’s really no precedent for what happened last night, not as far as they’re concerned. “I was successful,” you say, and he relaxes somewhat. The Strike agent lowers his rifle, and you look him over; the name on his uniform says _Ash_. The young ones are always afraid of you, but this one seems--curious, maybe. “Status,” you demand. Most of the time when you’re at station, you don’t speak unless spoken to, and it seems as if they like it that way as much as you do.

“Target died at around 0400,” he says. “They’re dealing with the other subject right now. Pierce wants you to stand by.” You roll your eyes; if they’d let you take the subject out last night, they wouldn’t have to deal with anything at all. But that’s good, it means they won’t put you in the chair for a while yet. You can try to figure out why the music had such an unexpected effect on your performance. What these things are that seem like memories, past experiences a person would have.

There’s a room off to the side of the vault, next to the toilets, with a cot to sleep on and a table and chair where you can take your nutrition. You pick up one of the tablets lying on the technician’s table to take with you. It’s not on the approved list, and the nervous technician gives you the side-eye. When there’s significant wait time on missions, the handlers will allow reading materials, access to approved information and lately the Internet, though that’s monitored heavily. Acquiring facts is peaceful; most of the time they’re not erased in recalibration, only those things that impede performance. But clearly the tablet is off-limits.

“I want to familiarize myself with this tech,” you say, and both technicians raise their eyebrows, but the handler shrugs and they all share a meaningful glance.

They think you can’t hear them when you’re out of the room, but the Strike agent says, “What’s it gonna hurt? It won’t matter what he knows soon enough.”

The tablet won’t have music on it, but it does have access to the Internet, you’ve seen them using it. They get bored, like anyone else, on stand-down; they’re not like you and they seem to need to occupy their time, don’t like acquiring facts, prefer television or videos to reading. The first thing you search for is the words you heard last night: _it’s been a long, long time_. Harry James and His Orchestra, Kitty Kallen was the singer. Released at the end of World War Two. It’s the particular style of the music that affected your concentration, maybe, why you wanted to listen to the same style in the vehicle all night. The listing for the recordings indicates there’s a video site that plays pictures from the era along with the music, and you turn down the volume of the tablet, then hold it close to your head to listen.

This could be perceived as rebellion and carries with it the risk of severe punishment, yet you can’t stop yourself from listening. This video links to other videos with music from Harry James, so you follow that trail and listen to them, as well. You should rest; you may be activated soon and you haven’t slept in more than thirty-six hours, which could further impede performance. But the music is so beautiful--it summons a sweet ache that swirls through muscle and bone, your fingers tap with the beat, you close your eyes and nod your head.

_The boy sits across a small table from you, lights glowing softly behind him. There’s a crush of people all around, but you see only him. His blue eyes are like a fawn’s, wide and soft and fringed by the thickest lashes. The drink glasses sweat in the steamy, smoky air, his tie is loose around his thin neck and his jacket’s off, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat as he hums along with the music._

_“She’s fantastic, isn’t she?” you say, admiring someone on the stage. An alto sax carves its way through the buzz of conversation in the room, and the singer’s voice melts in your ears like honey in hot liquid, golden, throaty._

_The boy nods, leans toward you. “Thanks again for bringing me. I’m sorry Louise couldn’t come.” There are lots of girls, even a few other boys, but none who send your heart racing the way this one does._

_“Ah, she don’t know what she’s missing,” you say, and slide your hand under the table over his knee, atop his hand. No one notices you two, no one at all. Touching his hand in public sends electricity cascading up and down your spine, up and down like the notes of the music. He locks his fingers between yours and you want to pull his hand to your mouth, kiss his palm and his twiglike wrist, hold it to your cheek._

_The room is spinning spinning spinning with the music and his touch, revolving faster than the earth, careening through the spiral arm of a galaxy and there’s only you two in it._

Outside the room the technician clears his throat to alert you to his presence. You put the tablet down and turn off the screen. “It’s past time for you to eat,” he says, though he avoids sticking his head into your space.

You rub a hand across your face and get up, motioning at him to bring it in. This curiosity has been indulged long enough. There’s no point in it.

When you’re finished with the nutrition, you step inside the restroom to see to your hygiene. But you keep staring at yourself in the broken mirror even after you’ve finished shaving and brushing your teeth, face distorted into fragmented angles. Why would you remember music and kissing a boy? Those are things humans do. Why do you remember a mission from so long ago, just because of that song? Mission histories are removed in the wiping process. It’s possible all this was planted inside your mind, maybe sometime equally long ago, waiting to be triggered--but for what purpose? To disturb your equilibrium and therefore test your function? One of the scientists once said that you’re a robot--only a robot would need such an arm, such strength, such narrow focus, and you agreed. It made sense at the time.

And yet...and yet. You bleed red when you’re wounded, just like the targets. You feel pain when they perform maintenance. You shave, wash, eat, clean your teeth. You remember the apple-flavored kisses of a boy with soft blond hair.

The boy is standing behind your reflection in the mirror, smiling and shaking his head as if you’ve told him a joke. Haunting you, just like the music. You close your eyes and wish him away.

You press the metal index finger against the broken glass, trace the outline of cheek, jaw, mouth. Some of you was made from the parts of humans, you look like one, but that doesn’t mean you _are_ one. Yet only a human being would fall apart over a song. Who does it hurt to believe you are?

 

Sleep is usually dark and dreamless, but today the song fizzes through your mind, lighting up half-remembered events and locations you can’t put a name to. The lyrics keep playing in your mind, strings of words that don’t mean anything: you’ll never know how many dreams I’ve dreamed about you, the melody haunts my reverie, all the old familiar places, I’ve heard that lovely song before. Sweet words, sad words. Gradually you realize that the Strike agent, Ash, is standing in the doorway. “Hey, wake up.” Watching you like he’s got some kind of right.

You sit abruptly and glance toward him, brush your hair out of your eyes.

“They’re calling you up. New targets.”

Grabbing your gear, you head for the gate. He runs up behind, then skids to a stop in front of you. “Hey. I’ll drive you.” He keeps saying “hey” like it’s your name. You didn’t pay him much mind before, but now you want to slap his face.

“No,” you say, and walk on.

“I’ll drive. This isn’t an op and I’ve got orders. I’m accountable for you.”

You shrug as if to say _suit yourself_. Most of the time you only drive or fly yourself on extended missions or when you need to disappear into your environment; you’re designed to function best alone. Driving is peaceful and allows you to absorb your surroundings. But the first mission yesterday was a failure and you were dark all night, so now they clearly want to keep eyes and ears on you at all times. There won’t be a chance to go dark, to listen to the radio, again.

When the two of you get in the vehicle you drove last night, anxiety tightens your belly, hot and prickly, with concern that he’ll discover you used the satellite radio--and what you listened to. This shouldn’t be different from any other time when your handlers are with you, yet everything in the past forty-eight hours feels tilted at odd angles. You’re always alone, even if humans are around. You are always alone.

When you reach Pierce’s home in a residential neighborhood of Alexandria, Ash whistles. “Niiice,” he says, putting it in park. He tries to come with you. “Stay here,” you say, opening the door, pulling out one of the SIGs.

“Hey. I was told to bring the asset to him, and that’s what I’m gonna do.” You could crush his windpipe with a flick of a metal finger, and you stare at him, contemplating the punishment if they were to find out you’d done that. It might be worth it. Hydra soldiers disappeared all the time, and you’re the asset, the Winter Soldier, and more valuable than one hundred of the grunts combined.

“Stay. Here.” He finally understands when you say it again, how close he is to losing his life. And he wants to see the new world that Hydra will build on the ruins of the old one, just days away now. They all want to see it. It’s of no consequence to you; it’s just your mission to protect the program.

These are facts you know: light travels at 670 million miles per hour. Each year, the moon moves 3.8 centimeters farther away from Earth. You’ve been around long enough that the sky has changed, that light from stars which died before you were even created only now reaches this planet. You’ve been around long enough to know that these men make plans to reshape the world, yet the planet spins on whether they achieve them or not. And you--you fight and wait, and sometimes light reaches you from distant constellations in the cold dark sky.

On approach to the house, you see a woman framed in the windows of what must be the living room, turning off lights. She has a purse; she’s leaving. Does Pierce have a wife? You’ve never thought of this before, that your commanders have lives, families outside of Hydra’s mission. That they would have someone who made the room spin and kissed them and listened to music. It makes your chest hurt, although there’s no reason it should. They’ve given you women before, men too, as tests, as training materials to ensure you know how to integrate socially, as part of their experiments on body functions.

You enter around back, gliding into Pierce’s kitchen, then pull out a chair to wait. The music you listened to earlier in the day echoes in the back of your head. _I’ll be looking at the moon, but I’ll be seeing you._ Do people today notice that the moon has crept backwards in the sky? Or is it only someone like you, or an old man like Pierce or Fury, who’s lived long enough to see the difference? In the songs, the moon and the stars are always linked to hearts and souls, to emotions you don’t have.

Thinking of it conjures the boy, and he stands in the corner of the kitchen, in a white shirt and suspenders, hands in the pockets of baggy brown trousers, smiling at you. The way he smiles, the tenderness in his eyes, is proof he can’t be a real memory, a real experience. Just a fantasy, a figment of someone else’s imagination. He may not be real, but you enjoy looking at him all the same. Pierce enters the kitchen and the boy vanishes.

At first he doesn’t see you, gets something from the refrigerator, then turns around and stares, blinking. It’s hard to tell whether he’s displeased or not. Did he expect you to knock or something? He speaks to the woman from the other room--she must be a housekeeper--and authorizes her to leave. It’s interesting, the way he talks to her, his tone of voice. “Want some milk?” he asks when she’s gone. You ignore the question and think of the song. He informs you of the new targets, something about Zola. Level six means they’ll be a challenge, but nothing you haven’t handled before. The first mission here failed; it won’t happen again.

Suddenly the woman is standing there, explaining that she’s forgotten her phone. She stares at you, stammering in her confusion and fear, before Pierce picks up your gun and shoots her. Strange that he chose to do your job, as if he’s trying to prove something. The past few days have been filled with such strange occurrences, with people deviating from protocols and procedures. Including you.

He looks at you and shrugs, puts the SIG on the table. _Or just how empty they all seemed without you_ For a moment the fact of his talking is easy to forget and your mind drifts to the trumpet, the saxophone, but then he gets up to retrieve something and you refocus before he can tell.

Pierce slides a tablet across the table. Is he...testing you? Have they mentioned you keeping the tablet? His sense of humor has always been strange; he’s nothing like Zola or Karpov or any of your other commanders and sometimes he enjoys provoking you, trying to make you react in whatever way amuses him at that moment. Maybe that’s why he shot the woman. But you take the tablet and flip through the files. Target 1, Captain America, and Target 2, Agent Romanov. Target 1 is Captain Rogers from last night. You should have gone off-profile and eliminated him then, and next thing you know, you’re pissed off again that they vetoed it. Being pissed off is useless, it indicates a loss of control.

Rogers reminds you of the boy you see in your mind. His nose and his eyes, especially the hair, but of course physically he’s nothing like the boy. But her...she has red hair and green eyes and a pointed chin, defiant.

You remember a girl... _She’s fourteen years old and has been in the Black Widow program since childhood, like all of them. Everyone considers her the best of the trainees, and even you have to admit she’s the best you’ve seen in the time you’ve been out of cryosleep. Her shooting, her knife skills, her understanding of tactics--she’s magnificent for one so young. Natalia, they call her. Her hair is like the blaze of fall leaves and her eyes are like a sea in winter. She reminds you of a little girl, someone you took care of once, though you don’t know how you could have--everyone you know is here._

_After a training exercise in the wilderness where she undergoes the roughest of the survival tests, she tries to ask about your past, and it’s...hard, you think, hard, yes, to say that you don’t have one. She seems so disappointed. But when you’re loading gear into the truck, she throws her arms around your neck and kisses your cheek. “I like you,” she says, using the familiar when she should use the formal. “You have taken such care with me.”_

_You pull her arms away from your neck. “None of that, now.” But she takes your breath away. How can she still have such feelings in her? Even as young as she is, they should have stripped that away from her long ago. “You’re the best pupil by far, that’s all. Your success benefits the program.”_

_Natalia regards you closely, her smile wry and her eyes glittering. “You are so alone, Soldier. You need someone to care for you.”_

_For the space of a heartbeat, you think,_ I had someone once, _and then it’s gone. Soon enough, so is Natalia._

Pierce is waiting for your acknowledgement, so you nod. “I’ll use the Russians.”

“Good. They’re expendable. My Strike teams aren’t.” Is that a warning? “I reviewed the mission from last night. Did I hear that right, that you were questioning orders?”

“No, sir. There were unexpected complications.”

“Well, now you’ll have a chance to take care of those complications, won’t that make you happy?” That tone in his voice is...sarcasm, you believe. “But see to it that you don’t question anyone again. And that you get extraction when you’re done. I can’t afford for you to go off-station right now. Be available when you’re required.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’re almost there. Just a few more days. Stay focused.” He gets up, the briefing is over. “And take care of that, will you?” he says, jerking a thumb at the body as he walks away. Now you know he’s trying to prove a point; this is not your duty, and what else is the agent in the car for if not this.

At the vehicle, you tell Ash to open the cargo hold. “Jesus fuck!” he nearly shouts.

“Shut your mouth,” you say, but he doesn’t seem to understand that that’s a command and a warning, because he keeps talking. “Is that a fucking body?” You put the housekeeper’s body in the trunk. After you’ve disposed of it, you’ll send him back here for cleanup. Picking up after you is their job. “I thought I heard shots fired. She see you or something? Who was she?”

What difference does it make? “Drive south along the river.” In a few days, it won’t matter if anyone finds her body, but for now, Pierce won’t tolerate anything that draws any lines connecting back to him. The colorful sparkle of the city lights disperses, farther and farther apart as you drive, and the sky fills in with stars. When you’ve reached an acceptable place, you tell him to stop, and take her to the embankment. She weighs nothing. As you lift her, your hand brushes against her hair where it’s coming undone, soft, silky. The feeling is...confusing.

It reminds you of touching another woman’s hair, long and dark brown, framing a face with huge brown eyes, crimson lips. _A sly smile as you dance, fast and loose and happy, in the middle of a whirling mass of bodies, all performing the same steps. There’s loud music surrounding you, wrapping around your brain stem, filling your chest. Trumpets wailing, a band swelling behind them._

_She touches the side of your face as you spin her around, grasps your hand. Her scarlet dress flutters around her shapely thighs, you catch a glimpse of the top of her stockings. When she spins, her hair caresses your hand and arm. You know the texture of that creamy skin hiding above her stockings, the silk of her hair when you bury your fingers in it, the taste of her mouth._

_“I still can’t get him to bloody dance,” she says, laughing, breathless. “He’s horrible.” She glances off to the side of the room, at the back of a tall blond man surrounded by others, all in uniform. The way she looks at him is the same way you do._

_“That’s what you got me for, doll,” you say, and lift her into the air._

You toss the woman’s body into the river, heart crashing against your ribs. “Take me back to station.”

“Turn on some music,” Ash says after you’ve been driving a while, and your blood freezes. “It’s not like we have to have complete silence, is it? I drive better with music.” He reaches across the dash and sighs, then pushes the buttons, oblivious of what it was set to before. He settles on something unfamiliar, a universe away from what you were listening to last night. “Figured you could use some chill electronica,” he says and grins. It’s unexpected; no one really smiles around you except Pierce, or Zola, and you hated Zola’s little smirk, the manner in which he always seemed to look at you when he did it. Studying you because he was pleased with his invention.

This music is much more pleasant than you’d have thought. The woman singing has a rich, smooth voice. You almost wish you could close your eyes and lean your head back and rest. When you return, you’ll need precisely two hours to sleep, and Rumlow should be there by then to plan the operation and round up the Russian mercenaries. You must remember to put the tablet back before they arrive.

Sleep is atypical, fitful and restless. After a while you just give up and put the tablet back where it belongs, busy yourself with weapons. When they show up, you give Rumlow and Rollins an update and your personnel selections. Their faces are battered and they stink of sweat and the acrid smoke from a missile explosion; whatever happened, they’ve been hunting all night and they’re tense, coiled.

Once that’s done, there’s nothing to do but wait. Without realizing it, you’ve been tapping a beat on your left leg, the sliver of the music still lodged in your brain, and you pull your hand away, alarmed. Rumlow comes in with the Russians’ dossiers in his hands, cleaned up now and in fresh clothing. “They’re all lined up.” He tosses you a GPS. “We’ve located your targets. They’ve got one of ours, Sitwell. They’re stationary right now, outside DC. That’s not gonna last, not with the Widow in play. Could be heading for the Insight carriers if she’s sweated him.”

The girl with the red hair, the Black Widows. Of course, you should have realized. The program would have dissolved just like the Soviet Union and she'd have been untethered. You encountered her once before, long after you’d left Russia, protecting a target and you thought you’d killed her. It’s a pity to have to take her out, a waste of good material, but she stands in Hydra’s way.

The agent’s tracker is moving slightly, southwest of the Potomac. Rumlow’s probably right. “We’ll hit them once they’re on the road. They won’t be watching for us that way. Have Strike hold cover about a hundred meters behind us.” He nods. You gear up. As he’s escorting you to the Russians’ location, you ask, “Is your agent collateral?”

“Pierce says everything’s at your discretion.”

“Good.” When the mission is over, you might ask for the tablet again.

 

There was an accomplice you couldn’t have planned for, driving the sedan. It complicated the operation, allowing her--the girl with the red red hair, the Black Widow, Natalia--to protect the accomplice and your target. Forcing your team to split themselves up, but that was your tactical error. She got you, twice, and you let her get under your skin, frustrate you. She almost out-thought you. She was always magnificent.

And if you could stop for a minute, you could figure it out, what this means, what went wrong. Why the captain looked at you as if he knew you. Why he called you Bucky. Why you hesitated long enough to miss your shot. The accomplice had wings. He could _fly_. How the hell were you supposed to--how could you plan for that? He was military on top of it, one more combatant you didn’t know about. The Russians are either dead or disabled, they didn’t do their goddamn job and let the target and the man with the wings take them out. This is--this is a complete mission failure. If there was time, you could stop and figure out what to do. Your head is pounding from the fight, from the--confusion.

But there’s no time, and you’ll have to sort it out when you get back to base. Strike has the captain and the woman. You let them hustle you into one of the vehicles for extraction. Everyone is talking, in the vehicle, over the comms, they want to know what went wrong, they want a report. You want to stop and attempt to look at the facts. You don’t report to them, anyway.

The arm is damaged. The girl with her stingers, and the man used his shield to jam the plates. Inside the bank there’s a dozen voices at once. The technicians fuss and fume and bring out their tools; that’s fine, that’ll give you time. They take off your armored vest, your utility belt, the webbing and the jacket and the shirt. The Strike agents just stare the whole time. No one’s ever watched you fail before.

You just need to figure this out--the man on the bridge and why you knew him. You’re falling from a--the train is speeding away--the mask came off--no, you’re falling and his hand is outstretched and he says, “Bucky?” or no, “Bucky! Hang on! Grab my hand”--but it’s not real--it’s not a memory--it can’t be--why can’t you figure it out?

Pierce hits you in the face and snaps you back to the now. He’s never struck you before, he leaves that to others. This is disobedience, yes, failure--but it’s important. If there was time. All at once you’re just so weary, of the leash they keep you on, the freezing and the waking and the pictures and the reports. You had a glimpse of another life--not yours, you know that, they’re not your memories because Zola created you, but it’s a life all the same. A life with music and kisses and dancing. If they would just give you some time. But Pierce keeps talking talking talking. “I knew him.” You did--you’re as certain of this as-- _Bucky?_ You had a name.

What are the facts? You knew him--he recognized you--he _knew you_ \--and there was a train and that shield and--Zola? “Sergeant Barnes.” Yes, Sergeant James Barnes of the 107th--an arm--he cut off your arm and you fell. You aren’t made from parts. A train and snow and ice, the ice is the worst, it burns like cold fire--no, a table. “I thought you were dead.” You were, you _were_.

This is important. You try to explain: “But I knew him.” They could understand if they just gave you time--you need time--need for them to stop talking. You _need._

Is the man--the captain--your target--still alive? No, orders were confirmed death in ten hours. Rumlow and Rollins took him after your extraction. “Prep him,” Pierce says. “Then wipe him and start over.” No, just--stop--you need time. To figure this out.

Goddammit. They push you back in the seat and you open your mouth for the biteguard. Recalibration always hurts at first and you’ll clench your teeth so hard your jaw breaks if you don’t use it. Muscles contract, spasm in reaction to electrical stimulation. Autonomic nervous system reactions: loss of control of respiration, cardiac function, vasomotor, reflex actions like swallowing, screaming. Human responses. Sparks that snap and burn will fire up and down your spine, white-hot nails will shoot into your head. The pain will flood through your body like it’s liquefying your insides, and then you’ll turn rubbery, weak, shocky, dimmed. After that they take you to cryo, the cold fire that drowns your lungs and blazes through your veins, a vacuum that sucks away your breath.

The halo cycles down over your head, lightning sparks and ignites the pain. No time left to figure this out.

These are facts you know: space does not have a temperature in and of itself. An object in space, such as a piece of metal, can reach two hundred and sixty degrees Celsius in constant sunlight, yet in the shade it could cool to minus one hundred. Gases between stars and solar winds can reach thousands or even millions of degrees. There is a theoretical point at which energy cannot be extracted from an object; this minimum possible temperature is absolute zero.

You had memories and you loved music and you kissed someone.

 

“What’s your condition?” the technician asks as you leave the chair.

Tired. You’re tired into your bones and you ache. Like a piece of overripe fruit, too-soft flesh that’s bruised and mushy in the center. You don’t know where this weariness comes from. The vault is mostly empty with only a few personnel left, the weapons are lined up on a table to clean and check while awaiting duty.

“Operational.” His eyes flick back and forth from you to the chair, back and forth. You wait, but the technicians don’t take you to cryo. One of them resets the machine instead. There’s minor damage to your metal arm--you can smell solder, the crisp hot snap of electricity. How was it damaged? You should remember that--everything is familiar, yet the details are fuzzy, as if you’re looking through fogged glass.

One of the Strike agents holds out a computer tablet to you. You check the time--you thought there was something you were supposed to do before this, something about Pierce’s project, but it’s hard to recall what it was, hurts to recall. “Hey. You want this?” the agent asks. You glance at the tablet and then at him--why the hell is he even talking to you?--before heading to the washroom to see to your hygiene.

“That is so creepy,” he says in a harsh whisper to the technician. “How do you keep _that_ stuff but the other’s just--poof--gone?” If there’s a response, it doesn’t concern you.

After washing up, you check your arm. The plating underneath is scorched, but they’ve made temporary repairs so that it seems serviceable. For a while you stare at your face in the mirror, wondering where this exhaustion comes from. If you’d been activated, it would make sense, but there’s just the usual blank space that you have when you’re prepared for the ice. It must have been punishment, you must have been disobedient. You return to your station to set the gear up.

The Strike agents sleep in short rotations, talking in hushed voices as you work, and the technicians monitor your condition in shifts. Usually you’re in stasis by now; they seem very interested in your performance. They ask questions, evaluate your response. When the weapons are checked and set you wait at the edge of the cot.

Maybe you could sleep. But this is a tired that has nothing to do with rest. Before dawn they secure your tactical gear and you load into the transport, where they’ll brief you on the drive. None of this is standard pre-mission protocol. It could have been an aborted mission, or one that was reset. There’s precedent for that. Everything’s off balance, weird. Yet you find you don’t really care.

 

The mission lets you hit him like he thinks he deserves it. As if his success is somehow deserving of punishment. There’ll be hell to pay for not stopping him before he destroyed the project. It’s not as if you didn’t do your best, but he still beat you. Maybe it was the shock of fighting someone as strong and capable as you are, maybe you didn’t know how hard it would be. Maybe you’re too tired. Maybe you’re just making up excuses.

It’s strange, how much you want to hurt him--you can’t remember ever feeling one way or another about a mission. A mission just _is_ \--get the orders, carry it out, go back in stasis. It’s your job, it’s what you were made for. Somehow, though, you’re consumed with a need to make him suffer, to make sure he knows how wrong he is. He drops his shield.

He insists that you know him, that you have a name, as if this isn’t what you were made for, and it’s infuriating. Like these names are mission override commands. He simply won’t shut up, calls you his friend. A little piece inside you snaps. “You’re my mission,” you inform him, over and over. The orbital bones of his right eye crack beneath your fist, his skin splits open. That should show him.

Only it doesn’t. “Then finish it,” he says, “’cause I’m with you to the end of the line.” It echoes in your head, a ricochet off your skull. His voice, the words...You remember a boy who looked so much like him, sounded exactly like him. He had soft blond hair and a sad smile that he seemed to share with you alone. Sweet and sour, prickly and soft. Frail and stronger than you will ever be. You think--you think the boy became this man. The mission.

When he falls into the fiery water below the helicarrier and sinks beneath the surface, you sigh with exasperation for some reason. Before you know it, you’re following him down, swimming until you catch him by the collar and pull him up, dragging him to the riverbank. Across the river the helicarriers groan and sink, the fires sending oily black smoke into the sky.

The eyelashes that fan over his cheeks make your throat feel tight. _You watch the boy as he folds a dress and places it on a pile of other clothing. You’re helping him put away his mother’s things, sorting through what to keep, what to give away. He picks up her hairbrush, little spasms shaking his skinny frame, though he tries to hide them--always tries to hide his crying, anything that makes a person see him as weak. You pull him to you and kiss his hair, kiss the wetness from the impossibly long eyelashes fanning over his cheeks._

_“You should keep that,” you say, and put the brush back on the table._

_“Sure, Buck...” he says. Little things have so much weight now. Fragments of the person who’s gone, strung together into a patchwork of memory by the thinnest of threads. And his heart has always been so tender and so weak. The radio plays softly in the background, a woman’s voice singing “I let a song go out of my heart”; outside you can hear kids running and playing, someone arguing._

_“We don’t have to do it all today, you know. No hurry.”_

_“I know. But there are people who could use some of these things. You don’t have to stay, I can take care of it.” He’s so exasperating, and so wonderful._

_“Steve. How many times I gotta tell you that you ain’t in this alone?”_

_He doesn’t say anything, just nods and clutches your wrist._

_“There’s my family, too. They love you.” You’re lost in the sweep of his eyelashes along his cheeks again as he closes his eyes and leans into you. They’ve always been your undoing, those eyes. God, your heart just pushes apart your ribs, swollen with all the ways you ache for him, the pressure is too much, too much._

_He pulls his head back, looks down, then up at you from under his brows and smiles his sad sweet smile. You’d pull the moon down for him if you could. You would stand in a fire and burn. You say, “Even if you think you got nothing else, you always got me.” He closes his eyes and sighs against you._

When you’re certain that he’s breathing, that he’s alive, you head back up the river, away from the wreckage.

Steve. That’s his name. The boy’s name is Steve Rogers and yours is Bucky Barnes. “Steve,” you say out loud. “Barnes.” It feels familiar in your mouth.

 

Music filters under the edges of your awareness, songs from the era of the exhibit. Before the war, during, the times when you were alive. You recognize some of them as you make your way through the room, reading the history you don’t remember, not all of it yet--it comes to you in pieces, more and more each day, but still fragmented, disjointed. Maybe this museum will influence what returns, the way the song brought the past back that night on the mission.

Everything Rogers said was true--there’s your face, forty times larger than life, up on the wall. With the Howling Commandos, with Captain America--with him. The voices, the music, the crush of people, it all fades to nothing as you narrow your focus to the glass panel in front of you, numbed with understanding. This is your tombstone, your memorial. This is everything they stole from you.

In front of the panel with your face there’s a film loop that plays, clips of you and Steve Rogers when he was the Captain. In nearly every frame you’re together, side by side. “Inseparable on both schoolyard and battlefield” the narration claims. On film you smile and laugh and talk and touch. You’re alive and whole and you seem so human.

The earth revolves at one thousand miles per hour, just as it did when that young man with your face stood next to his friend. The moon still hangs in the sky, only a little farther away than the one they gazed up at.

These are not facts, but you know them just the same: you are made of exploding suns and collapsing stars. The heavens blaze and so do you. On the screen Steve Rogers looks at Bucky Barnes--at _you_ \--and his eyes are filled with galaxies, hurtling through the universe at 1.3 million miles per hour.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to auslandischwasser for the beta!
> 
> Reblogs [on Tumblr](http://teatotally.tumblr.com/post/121939727040/new-fic-in-the-stardust-of-a-song), likes, comments, are treasured!


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